Lscc To Get Back In The Game

A New Athletic Director Hopes To Make A Success Of The College's Fourth Attempt At A Sports Program.

June 22, 1997|By Dave Weber of The Sentinel Staff

LEESBURG — An athletic director has been hired at Lake-Sumter Community College as a first step toward restarting a sports program that has failed three times before.

Mike Matulia, a baseball coach at Miami-Dade Community College, in August will begin planning student athletic programs that will start a year later.

College officials say they want to plan carefully to assure that athletics will be successful this time.

''He is going to do a feasibility study first to make sure that there is enough support for athletics,'' college President Robert Westrick said. ''If the answer is yes, he will be developing a plan to implement a program.''

While college officials are taking a cautious approach, they feel certain that the community wants athletics once more at the college.

A group of Leesburg athletic boosters has been pushing for the return of sports for several years, and Cecil Schumacker, chairman of the college's board of trustees, is among those who support sports.

The last attempt at sports, a basketball program, folded in 1991 at midseason, when several team members got such poor grades that they were ineligible to play.

Don't expect a repeat of that debacle, Matulia said.

''Education is going to be No. 1,'' Matulia said. ''I am an educator, and athletics are just part of education.''

The college this year received a $166,600 grant from the state toward an athletic program. The money comes from $1 million the Legislature set aside to promote sports programs for women in community colleges.

Because the money is earmarked toward making athletics more available to women, a women's volleyball team is likely to be among the first fielded at the college, Matulia said. But there also may be a men's baseball team and a women's softball team.

Westrick said that women's sports would continue to be accented because women make up about 60 percent of the student population at the college.

Officials are unsure how they will pay for the sports program. Matulia said he will sound out community supporters and look for other means to fund the program after the state grant runs out.

Sources of funding will be a continuing issue. Some trustees already have said they are leery of plowing money into athletics that could go for other uses.

Still, others argue that athletics are a part of college life that has been missing at Lake-Sumter.

''It offers students an enriched environment if you have sports,'' Westrick said.

College officials also hope to use athletics as a tool to attract younger students just out of high school, who often attend other colleges or universities instead of staying in the county.

Those students want traditional college activities, including sports, officials said.

Lake-Sumter's enrollment has remained static for years, and officials are looking at sports and other devices to boost enrollment.

Westrick, a former college basketball player, is enthusiastic about restarting athletics at Lake-Sumter.

However, each of the college's three previous presidents also started sports programs that later failed.